The new University of Illinois President stopped in Peoria Thursday to tour the College of Medicine campus. The visit comes as the campus looks to expand:
The College of Medicine wants to start educating first year medical students as soon as 2017.
But that would likely require more space and funding to pay for new faculty and handle 60 new students each year. New U of I President Timothy Killeen says those questions of money and space aren't going unnoticed:
“If there are spatial needs, we’ll work hard to get those spatial needs, we need appropriate classrooms, we need appropriate facilities, we need access to residencies in excellent places.”
Peoria's College of Medicine expansion comes at a time when U of I officials are eyeing looming state funding cuts.
Peoria College of Medicine Dean, Dr. Sara Rusch, says the campus can use ‘active learning’ to adapt to possible space crunches:
“So you don’t need the traditional tiered-lecture hall as much because we’re trying to do more problem-solving and interactive learning. So some of the things that might have been barriers in a more traditional-design curriculum will be less of a barrier for us in the future.”
Rusch says the College would also need to hire more professors and add more first-year coursework to accommodate the new medical students.
Killeen says the U of I is currently reviewing annual capital requests from each campus.